Call upon the UN to appoint a Protector of Journalists!

type:

NGO, Petition

by:

Deniz Zehra Tavli

Remember Omran? The five-year-old Syrian boy placed in an ambulance after a bomb attack, in shock and bleeding, rescued amid the rubble of a crumbled building?

The only reason you or I can even picture this innocent boy and know his story is because journalists risked their own lives to capture this moment and to shine a bright spotlight on the need for dramatic action in Syria to help save lives. But there’s a frightening growing trend in the journalist community – and we need your help today to reverse the tide.

In the last 10 years alone, nearly 800 journalists have been killed in the line of duty. Many more have been kidnapped, tortured or reported missing. And when journalists die, the information that they are struggling to get out to the world, dies with them.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is leading the effort as part of a worldwide coalition of organizations to defend journalists’ lives by calling upon the UN to appoint a politically powerful Protector of Journalists, a Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for the Safety of Journalists.

Journalists endure risk after risk – and sometimes pay the ultimate price with their lives to share their stories with us. Join the campaign of RSF #ProtectJournalists by signing their letter today!

When the bombs fall, the wounded and dying are rushed to makeshift hospitals in caves, basements and even living rooms. In these unlikely beacons of hope, doctors operating by the light of cellphones, using rudimentary equipment and insufficient medicine, manage to save lives everyday. Against all odds.

More than three-quarters of Syrian doctors have fled since 2011. Those that remain have chosen to stay to serve, believing it their duty to save lives, even though it means risking theirs as hospitals are targets of daily airstrikes. Yet, theres a lack of needed training for those who remained: Dentists are performing surgeries, vets are treating cases of malnutrition and young volunteers are trained as anesthesiologists. In July 2016 a medical facility was attacked on average every 17 hours. Many facilities have been attacked multiple times, often changing location for safety.

Despite being in clear contravention of international humanitarian law, medics have been executed and tortured. However, the biggest killer of medical workers in Syria is neither torture nor execution. The greatest threat comes from the air - the Syrian government and Russian bombing. At least 750 medical workers have been killed and over 400 hospital attacks have been destroyed by these indiscriminate weapons.

These attacks are not just killing physicians and destroying hospitals, but damaging entire communities. When you kill one doctor in Syria, you are ensuring that hundreds of people will die.

Help stopping the targeting of hospitals, doctors and medical care workers in Syria by signing the petition of Medics Under Fire! Set a clear signal to the Syrian government to respect the resolutions of the United Nations condemning attacks against medical facilities and medical personnel in conflict!

In the worst humanitarian catastrophe of a generation, the UN has handed the reins of its aid operation to Assad and his regime which is dictating where UN aid goes from Damascus, who the UN is allowed to work with and what the UN spends its money on.

The UN’s capitulation to the Assad regime means they have failed to successfully challenge Assad’s starvation sieges under which a million Syrians are denied access to food, medicine and running water. Instead, over 95% of the food aid managed by the UN in Damascus has been issued directly into areas under regime control.

Aid should go to those who need it most, regardless of side. That is the principle of impartiality. Instead of defending the importance of impartiality in the face of these bullying tactics from the Syrian government, UN agencies in Damascus have bent over backwards to protect their relationship with the regime.

Join Syria’s largest humanitarian and human rights groups and demand the UN set clear conditions for its cooperation with the Syrian government to enact a fair and impartial aid operation. If those conditions aren’t met, the United Nations in Syria should suspend cooperation with the government.

Preemptive love coalition is a Non-Profit-Organization which provides live-saving heart surgeries and emergency relief for displaced communities around Iraq.

In many war-torn countries there is a backlog of children with life-threatening heart defects, unable to get the care they need. Since 2008 PLC has provided more than 1600 livesaving heart operations for sick children around the world. These Remedy Missions began in Iraq and expanded into Lybia, Nigeria and other conflict and crisis ridden countries. A Remedy Mission includes between 15 to 25 surgeries, along with hundreds of hours of training for local doctors and nurses – providing a more efficient and sustaining lifesaving solution for now and for later.

Another focus of the NPO is the economic recreation of displaced communities around Iraq. Families and persons who have been displaced by conflict are turned from victims into selfemployed owners of small businesses, entrepreneurs and helped to achieve job positions with a sustainable income. Displaced children are empowered by being put back into school, while PLC is advocating with officials to prioritize education, refurbishing schools and providing uniforms and supplies for the classroom. In 2015 PLC put 20.000 Iraqi children back into the classroom. Currently the organization, led by CEO and founder Jeremey Courtney, is focusing on the crisis in Fallujah where a major humanitarian crisis is taking place.

If you want to help Preemptive love coalition and follow their core values of giving love, showing up and getting out of the way so that others can stand on their own, donate or host an event via their webpage.

Lebanon, a small country of about 4.5 million citizens, has taken on an enormous burden, hosting 1.1 million registered Syrian refugees. More than 250,000 school-age Syrians live there who are out of school. With international assistance, the Education Ministry has opened public schools to Syrian refugees, and 158,000 enrolled last year. The Education Ministry estimates another 87,000 are in private schools. But five years into the war in Syria, the number of refugee children still out of school is an immediate crisis.

Donor support, and pressure, are needed to eliminate barriers that are still keeping children out of school. As leading donors, the European Commission and European Union member states have a critical role to play for children’s fundamental right to an education, Lebanon’s stability, and Syria’s future.

Lebanon needs sustained and targeted support to prevent a generation of Syrian children from growing up without an education. With more than 70 percent of Syrian families in Lebanon living below the poverty line, subsidized transportation is needed to get more children into school. But enrolling children is only the first step—providing a quality education is key to preventing dropouts. Syrian children need trained teachers, mental health support, and accelerated programs to teach English and French, the unfamiliar languages of instruction in Lebanon.

Lebanon needs help, and the children who fled the horrors of war in Syria need the tools to build a better future for themselves and their country. Will you help Syrian school children and donate for their better future?

Can you imagine being forced to marry a man old enough to be your grandfather? Maria can.

She’s one of thousands of girls as young as 11 who are being denied their basic human rights. They are being robbed of an education. They aren’t getting a say in what happens to their bodies. And they’ve had enough. They’re starting a revolution against child marriage. But it will fail without your support.

Burkina Faso has a child marriage prevalence rate of 52%. On average, almost one out of two girls in Burkina will be married before the age of 18. The rates of child marriage vary from one region to another, and are as high as 86% in the Sahel region and 76% in the East region.

Maria ran away from her husband and is living with her family again – but thousands of young girls just like her are at risk. Will you join their revolution and help end child marriage once and for all?

Almost everything you eat could be controlled by a single mega-corporation, if Bayer gets its way and buys Monsanto.

Once the deal goes ahead it could spell disaster for our food supply and farmers, ushering in a new era of sterile crops soaked in dangerous pesticides. If the deal is successful, it'll make the new corporation the biggest seed maker and pesticide company in the world - and it will have almost total control of the most important aspects of our food supply.

At the centre of Bayer and Monsanto's corporate agribusiness model is the indiscriminate, widespread use of pesticides linked to the massive global bee die-off.

Bayer depends on people to buy its medicine. And Bayer’s shareholders know we simply wouldn't trust the company anymore once it’s joined with Monsanto - its shares have already fallen a massive 12% since the takeover was announced. All of this is making Bayer’s shareholders nervous. If enough pressure is piled on now, the shares could fall even further and mobilise investors to demand Bayer pulls out of the deal.

Monsanto rejected the first offer from Bayer, but the negotiations are far from over. Once a merger like this goes through, Bayer and Monsanto will be even harder to stop - Act now to block the creation of this massive corporate food supply controler and bee-killer! Tell Bayer to stop its mega-merger with Monsanto!

Erol Önderoglu was placed in pre-trial detention by an Istanbul court on June 20, 2016, along with the journalist Ahmet Nesin and the human rights defender Sebnem Korur Fincanci. The three intellectuals are charged with “terrorist propaganda” for taking part in a campaign of solidarity with the Kurdish daily Özgür Gündem.

Erol Önderoglu is being prosecuted on the basis of three articles published by Özgür Gündem In May 2016 about power struggles within the various Turkish security forces and about the ongoing operations against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels in southeastern Anatolia.

Erol Önderoglu has fought tirelessly to defend persecuted journalists for the past 20 years. He is the representative in Turkey for Reporters without Borders since 1996, a leader in this field and highly valued for his honesty and integrity.

Handcuffed and jailed after a closed hearing, Erol Önderoglu is today the victim of the persecutions he always denounced. It’s now our turn to fight for him.

Help Reporters without Borders, sign their petition and call on the Turkish authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Erol Önderoglu, Ahmet Nesin and Sebnem Korur Fincanci. All charges brought against them and 34 other participants in the solidarity campaign with Özgür Gündem should immediately be dropped!

Agriculture is crucial to Ethiopia’s food security and the livelihoods of nearly 85% of its people.

Accelerating agricultural growth is a critical national priority: The country’s government has set ambitious targets for the agricultural sector to increase productivity, accelerate commercialization, and improve the livelihoods of Ethiopia’s smallholder farmers. Achieving the GTP targets requires coordinated action and innovation among key stakeholders.

Synergos works with the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) and others to strengthen their partnerships, collaboratively identify systemic bottlenecks, and jointly develop solutions that promote food security and improve the lives and livelihoods of small-scale farmers. Based on geographic concentrations of producers, agribusinesses, and institutions engaged in the same agricultural sub-sector, the initiative catalyzes growth by harnessing efforts among an interconnected web of actors, from the federal to regional to local levels. Such collaboration allows small-scale farmers and agribusinesses to better realize higher productivity, and more market-oriented and higher value-added production.

Synergos is a non-profit organization which aims to reduce global poverty through “inclusive partnerships” that bring together government, business, civil society and local communities.

Support Synergos and their important work for small-scale farmers in Ethiopia by donating and/or spreading their news through your channels!

In 2016 around 60 million people will be affected by El Niño in East and Southern Africa, the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the UN’s humanitarian agency. The effects of El Niño have combined with existing droughts to make this year the hardest for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

In the worst affected countries, people go to bed with empty stomachs work their land or go to school with the gnawing pain of hunger; they walk or cycle for miles to try to find food. Pastoralists and small scale farmers are facing the same problems everywhere; their crops are failing and their animals are dying. Food insecurity is forcing people to cut down on the quantity and variety of the food that they eat, leading to malnutrition.

Oxfam is helping families to become more resilient to the devastating effects of climate change and El Niño, but more needs to be done. Support Oxfam and call on world leaders to release the cash urgently needed to save lives now and in the future!